Textile Design Without Boundaries

Text partially published in the MA Textile Futures Degree Show Catalogue, London, 2008

Guipure, Jacob Schlaepfer

This article, entitled Textiles’ Boundaries, the Paradoxical Story of Paper and Lace and exploring the boundaries between textile and respectively paper and lace, was originally published in the MA Textiles Futures Degree Show 08 catalogue under the title “Materials & Innovation”, combination of two entries by Jenny Leary & Aurélie Mossé. Here you have access to the full article on the Paradoxical Story of Paper and Lace

Is textile only restricted to its definition: a piece of flexible material, usually made by weaving, felting or knitting, as defined in the common sense? Lace, the textile of transparency, the fabric of the veiled and unveiled by excellence, undoubtedly challenges this preconception. However, upon examination, and as the cultural dictionary of textile suggests: “lace is not a fabric because it is not woven on a loom. It is neither an embroidery in the sense that it is not embroidered on a medium pre-existent to itself” *. But who can pretend this “adorned void” , metaphor of Renaissance is not a textile?

It is not a textile in the original and conceptual sense of a material made of the regular inversion of yarn’s crossing. Indeed, lace transforms yarn into an openwork surface, without relaying on permanent mediums and frames. This new process –that frees the yarn from regular crossing constraints- was so different at the time from other techniques of yarn processing, that it has generated its own aesthetic. Nevertheless, lace, following the example of weaving, can still be accepted as a textile story, in the sense that it remains a story of the yarn’s transformation. Lace’s ambiguity challenges our perception of what textile can be and remind us its sometimes paradoxical alchemy.

It would be impossible to conclude about current textile boundaries without mentioning the growing importance of soft technologies and intelligent fabrics. Most of these new technologies are encouraging the invisible integration of sensors and actuators into the environment by taking a textile shape. They extend the limits of where computation can operate and reshape the modalities of interaction with our environment. But where start the technology, where ends the fabric, smart textiles seems to ask us? No doubt here at Central Saint Martins that is textile that will make the difference.